
Gass. 
Book. 



JX 



'J ' \ 



HISTOM 



ITS PLACE IN A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

Address of Prof. Wm. Preston Johnston, of Washhigton and 
Lee Universitij, before the Educational Association of Virginia^ 
at Staunton, Va., July 10, 1872. 

The character of this Convention, the importance and diiTicnlty 
of the subject assigned for discussion, and my inadequacy for the 
task, might well embarrass me in meeting this audience, were I 
not encouraged to proceed by the reflection that the most enlight- 
ened are the most indulgent, and that as faithful teachers you are 
aware how little time can be spared from the school to other 
duties. / 

You have given me for discussion: " The Place and Importance 
of the Study of History in a scheme of Liberal Education." It is 
proper to state that the spirit in which I study and strive to teach, 
and in which I now address you, is tentative, not dogmatic; and 
that I shall have accomplished my object here, if my views shall 
be considered useful or suggestive. I am here as a seeker for 
truth merely; and if at times my remarks seem to assume a didac- 
tic form, I beg you to understand that it is to save time, and mul- 
tiplied qualifications and limitations of thought not suited to the 
occasion. 

That we may have common ground to stand on, we must first 
consider the question: " What is History?" The answer should 
seem most easy; but a comparison of the views of eminent writers 
shows not only difterence, but contradiction, as to the proper sub- 
ject-matter, ends in view, modes of explication and deductions, of 
History. Let us consult the oracles. Carlyle calls it, "a looking 
both before and after." Macaulay seeks to place before us, " a 
true picture of the life of our ancestors." Arnold calls it, " the 



2 HISTORY. 

biography of a society," and considers that its object is to trace 
out that common purpose, which, whether consciously or uncon- 
sciously, is the main object of the joint lives of the individuals 
who compose a society. Grote proposes in his History of Greece 
to set forth, " Hellenic phenomena as illustrative of Hellenic mind 
and character;" — to exhibit a general picture, the points of 
resemblance as well as of contrast with modern society, and the 
action of the socinl system. Sir Jamies Stephens, viewing histoi'y 
"as a drama of which retribution is the law, opinion the chief 
agent, and the improvement and ultimate happiness of our race, 
the appointed though remote catastrophe," asserts that, " to trace 
out the pirogress of public opinion in moulding the character and 
condition of the nations is the highest ofHce of History." Taine 
would read as in a mirror, the laws of historical development in 
individual manifestations; and these again in the unconscious 
out-cropping of literary endeavor. Michelet epigrammatically 
says: "Thierry called history narrative; and M. Guizot, analysis. 
I have named it resurrection, and it will retain the name." With 
one it is fact and individual man; with another, philosophy; the 
third strives by force of imagination to summon into life the image 
of the perished. To these three views of History, or their combi- 
nationSj all writing or study of History must in the main conform; 
and yet to my mind they do not convey an exact, clear, and full 
conception of the idea v»'e seek. You will pardon me therefore it 
I attempt a definition, which I shall then endeavor to verify: 
History is mail's true record of whatever is general, important, and 
ascertained, in the living past of humanity. In order to measure 
the value of this definition let us first consider the widest possible 
meaning that can be attached to the term, the utmost reach and 
range of the realm of History. There is a reco^rd of the past of 
Humanity, an unblotted Book over whose register Truth keeps an 
eternal watch. Here are written all past deeds of men, all thoughts, 
all aspirations; the plans, the labors, the fruitions of the genera 
tions; the birth, education, struggles, and extinction of individuals 
dynasties, and races; all the past; yes, all, all, all. Here are se^ 
down the secret forces that resulted in the Maelstrom of Barbarian 
invasion; or the more occult laws that guided prehistoric migra- 
tions, Aryan, Semitic, or Turanian. Here too the motive, light as 
dust in the balance, that turned the scale for good or evil in the 
characters of memorable or forgotten men, is printed with indeli- 
le types. Its inscriptions reach a microscopic minuteness in the 



HISTORY. 3 

moral as in the material world, and again [expand to an infinity 
coextensive with the sphere of the human soul. But this self- 
registered past, this absolute History, is contained in the Book of 
Life alone; is scanned by the eye of Omniscience only; and to the 
mind, or memory, or imagination of man is unattainable and in- 
comprehensible. 

In our narrower view and parlance then, History is man's record 
of man. The slender threads of human narrative stretch through 
the immensity of the Past, as telegraph wires traverse a continent; 
and like them they link the distant and unknown. But reverse 
the telescope; view the filaments of thought and action, no longer 
in comparison with the range of absolute History, but contrasted 
with the possibility of human acquisition. Measure even the 
actual accumulation of historical knowledge by what is within 
the reach of anyone intellect, and note the difference. The count- 
less volumes, monumentally ranged in those intellectual cemeteries, 
the great libraries of the world, defy the patience of the sexton- 
like bibliographer; the very catalogue of the Babylonish host of 
authors puzzles the learned, with its names-^^'Hence History must 
be limited by the attainable. To know, to understand, to remem- 
ber much, we must consent to ignore, to omit, to forget much 
We must consign to oblivion all that is trivial and merely personal. 
We must reject whatever cannot be used as an element in the 
development of society or of man, or as a symbol for some great 
moral fact, or as a factor in the elimination of truth. 

To know what History is, we must first determine what it is not. 
It must be discriminated from its auxiliary sciences. All is not 
History that is valuable to it, that is in aid of it, that tends to it. 
It does not include man's record of the past of Nature, nor Nature's 
record of the past of man. The rise of uninhabited coral-reefs and 
the discovery of fossil men have their appropriate places in science, 
but History takes no note of them. So with Natural History, 
includingZoology, Comparative Anatomy, Anthropology, and other 
sciences of life; though they trench upon the domain of physical 
man, they do not touch that spiritual nature of which History is 
the record. 

By foi-ce of the term, History is of the- Past. But it is of the 
living Past; with the dead Past it has no part nor lot. It says, 
" This was "; but it says also, " This is." The, fact or idea that it 
declares to us must still subsist, in itself or in its results. If it 
has perished, or remains as the organism is imprinted in the rock, 



4 HISTORY. 

then whatever its scientific value, it is still only a fossil, and be- 
longs not to History, but to Archteology. This is the Paloeonto- 
logy of History. It disinters, arranges, classifies, surmises, theo- 
rizes: it argues toward History; but not in it, nor of it. It strains 
human ingenuity to bridge the chasms between isolated facts. 
Archreology deals not with vital questions; while History must 
reanimate the body of the times gone by with the true spirit of 
that age. It is the biography of the living Past that brought forth 
great ideas and moral forces, impressed them with the seal of 
beauty, and transmitted them as a sacred and imperishable trust 
for the generations of men. The researches into the antiquities of 
Egypt and Nineveh illustrate what is meant by Archaeology; the 
legacies of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman literature have that per- 
ennial bloom that belongs to History. The Middle Ages too, with 
their germs of institutions, principles, and maxims of life, still 
existing in, or influencing our civilization, are a livin<r Past. So 
of any period that has a personal or national interest to the reader, 
or is connected by close logical or chronological sequence with 
the present motive powers of the world. But mere fact however 
certain, unendowed with moral significance; with no spiritual life, 
with no continuity of existence, binding it to the Past, Present, 
and Future; belonging not to the ever-recurring, ever-subsisting I 
AM which links man with Jehovah; loses the eternal essence of 
Truth and perishes. Though the human historian notes down with 
painful diligence dead facts. Time, the true Nemesis, with gently- 
obliterating hand, will wipe away " all trivial, fond records," the 
dross and dust of ages, leaving the thrice purged gold alone behind. 
But History treats of a past that not only lives, but was and is 
importanl It neglects the useless, the frivolous, the ti-ansitory. 
As Archaeology, or the science of earliest, prehistoric things, treats 
of what has perished; so Palreology, or the science of antiquities, 
of the minute details of ancient life, investigates and stores away, 
for its own or for historical purposes, that which is perishable. 
Stirred by the love of accumulation, not by the love of wisdom, 
antiquarianism gathers and hoards with the indiscriminating hand 
of the miser whatever is old, or odd, or curious. The Historic 
Muse walks through this cabinet, picking here and there a fact, to 
aid a scenic efi"ect, to verify or confute a statement or hypothesis, 
or to elucidate an event. Much that is trifling in itself is important 
in its relations. Slender circumstances furnish wonderful tests of 
truth. As he armies of Sapor were dispersed by swarms of inuu- 



HISTORY. 5 

merable gnats, so a mighty array of embattled falsehood scatters 
before a cloud of witnesses, minute, incidental, and undesigned. 
History therefore takes note of these, but that is all; it must at last 
define itself by the standard of the permanent, the important, and 
the general. Even from the narrowest stand-points of historical 
composition, general interests must necessarily be present to the 
mind. Herodotus weaves into his w^b of story the antagonism of 
Greek and Asiatic. It is as warning or example to a class that 
the personal or specific is presented. However voluminous and 
minutely particular, History must perforce leave much unsaid. It 
is always a series of generalizations. 

It is by this same division of general and particular that Biog- 
raphy is set apart from History. More vivid and interesting, 
teaching the same lessons more directly and in more concrete 
forms, at once stimulating and gratifying the curiosity and the 
imagination and pressing home the moral, Biography aids, illus- 
trates, and verifies History; and is indeed the very material out of 
which it is made. It is the Mother of History. But it differs in 
this : History is general; while Biography is narrow, partial, and 
fragmentary. It is also the Interpreter of History. Social and 
political problems, insoluble by general laws, become plain by the 
application of individual experience. The exceptional has its 
place. Kingsley says: " History is the history of men and women 
and of nothing else-." The forces that move society however are 
not few and simple, but manifold and compound; and social phe- 
nomena are not aggregations, but resultants. Hence though the 
lives of men and women make up so large a part of History, there 
is also a life of society apart from the lives of its members. For 
instance, a foreign domination, an alien or usurped government, 
an enforced polity, produce facts in a country at war with the lives 
of its inhabitants. We must therefore add to Kingsley's definition, 
with Arnold; that " History is the biography of a society." 

But it is not possible within the limits of this address to do more 
than suggest the coterminous and auxiliary sciences that cluster 
about History. Its position is central in the circle of human 
knowledge; because it is the record and interpretation of man, the 
central figure of creation. We must discriminate between it and 
the tangent, intersecting, and included provinces of kindred and 
subsidiary departments of knowledge. Indeed a thing must differ 
from what only contributes to it. Hence all special histories, 
whether of Philosophy, Morals, Religion or Law; of Fine Arts 



6 HISTORY. 

Useful Arts, or Sciences; and all annals of Towns, Counties or Coi*- 
porations: in a word, the record of whatsoever does not touch the 
life of the State, of an independent political Community or self- 
aggregated and conscious national existence, however valuable as 
accessory to History, cannot claim its name. In like manner 
Chronology, Geography, Ethnology, Political Economy, Literary 
History, the History of Literature, Literature itself, all these are 
but sections of human learning and manifestations of human ac- 
tivity elucidating the history of a people or of the race. These 
sciences are the handmaidens of the queenly and star-crowned 
daughter of Memory, who sits enthroned in the human soul, sway- 
ing with double sceptre the realms of fact and of imagination. 

But the most essential criterion of History is its truth. It is the 
re23resentation of the Real. In the nature of things therefore all 
fiction must be rejected. Fiction, which is unreal and pictures 
what is not, of course cannot be History, which narrates what is. 
Fiction, imitating particular events, embodying general truths, 
stimulating and aiding the imagination, has its uses in the study 
of History; but it is the figment of man's fancy, not the action of 
God's creatures; and must be rigorously discriminated from His- 
tory. If this may be said of what is ^professedly unreal, it must be 
said of all that is either consciously or unconsciously false. All 
forms and phases of falsification vitiate, eacli in its degree. Its 
grades, its forms, its sources are multitudinous. In a world where 
falsehood so prevails, History, resting upon human testimony, 
must suffer from its corrupting touch. Absolute truth hardly 
exists in the conception or'expression of man. History, then, as a 
human record, partakes of the error and fallibility of man's nature. 
Indeed the credibility of all history has been doubted: and yet the 
truth may be attained; it has been, and on vital matters generally 
will be, attained. To demand an infallible rule for the settlement 
of every case, would be to make History tlie most positive of 
sciences: when, as it rests chiefly upon human testimony and has 
for a principal purpose the moral guidance of men, its decisions, 
like other questions in practical morality, generally can be, and 
need be, based only upon the preponderance of probabilities. Still 
there are many facts that, after every test and mode of proof, are 
pronounced certain. Around these main facts are grouped a num- 
ber of attendant circumstances which raay.be considered as finally 
settled in the minds of men. To narrate this body of fact, to as- 
certain additional facts, to discuss its bearings upon the progress 



HISTORY. 7 

of man, and to draw from it fair deductions and set upon these a 
moral value, are among the offices of History. And here it is suf- 
ficient to mention merely the painful siftings of evidence; the slow, 
careful, and qualified decisions; the rehearings of adjudicated 
points, the reviews and reversals of decrees and overruliiigs of es- 
tablished opinions, that mark the calendar of the great Chancery 
of Time. It is as Explorer, Scribe, Interpreter, and Judge of the 
Past; as Recorder and Moral Guide of the Present; and as Seer of 
the Future, that we look up to the venerable form of History. 

History, limited to the true and rejecting all that is fictitious 
and consciously false, must still be discriminated from the uncon- 
sciously false, which for lack of a better name, I call Fable. Be- 
tween pure Fable and scientific History however, lies a debatable 
ground, which is assigned to the one or the other, according to 
the theory or the prejudices of the critic. Alluring as this tract 
has proved to all explorers, time will not permit its investigation 
to-day; though I will venture to indicate the three sections into 
which it may be divided. These are Myth, Legend and Tradi- 
tion; and are thus difi"erentiated. Myth is Fable with its slight 
alloy of fact unassayed; Tradition is History with its fabulous ele- 
ment uneliminated; while between the two lies Legend with a 
central core of fact, around which cluster the embellishments of 
fancy and fiction. Tradition is unwritten, unsifted History. It 
is the raw material, ascertainable but unascertained, froiTi which 
the web of history is woven. It is the testimony in each case, 
hearsay and secondary evidence included, before it has been sub- 
jected to the cross examination and criticism of opposing counsel, 
to judicial deliberation, and to the large common-sense of that 
iurv we call the .world. 

Myth, whether originating in hyperbole, in allegory, or m for- 
gotten metaphor; and whether essentially a supernatural romance, 
a personification of the powers of nature, or, as Max MUlIer says, 
"a dialect, an ancient form of speech;" yields even to the most 
searching analysis but a slight residuum of truth. It seeks to 
explain the marvellous, by particularizing the general, and em- 
bodying the abstract and universal. But Legend, though dealing 
with prodigy and often cutting the knot of routine by supernatural 
interposition, is human in its interest. It expands, idealizes, and 
generalizes the particular; and attempts to assign ideas and facts 
where they ought a priori to belong. It attributes to a favorite 
hero all words and deeds in keeping with the popular estimate of 



8 HISTORY. 

him, groups a series of occurrences around a single person or 
event, and glorifies plain lact with the halo of poetry and the 
splendors of the imagination. 

I have thus detained you in defining, at some length, the mean- 
ing of the term History, in the hope that a greater exactness in this 
regard might not be without its value in considering the j^lace and 
importance of History in a scheme of liberal education. I have 
called it: " man's true record of whatever is general, important, 
and ascertained, in the Jiving Past of Humanity." It is indeed a 
record, but one a thousand times corrected and revised; and on 
the scroll are traced in letters of blood and tears the large induc- 
tions that humanity has made as its lessons to each man. O mighty 
Scroll! where in a century the blazon of a line may set down all 
the truth that is imperishable. 

II. Divisions op Histokv. — The second great question that 
arises for consideration is, where the student will find this record 
inscribed. In what volume is it written? In what book is it reg- 
istered? Into no one treasury of human knowledge are its riches 
gathered: its facts and inferences, its truths and illustrations are 
not collected into any systematic body of history; but are scattered 
like diamonds in the alluvial drift. The text is wrested from the 
context: "here a line and there a line." An episode remains in 
cipher until ingenuity has found the key. A relic or a sign crops 
out above the surface, where beneath the decay of error, the debris 
of the transitory, and the dust of the trivial, court and colonnade 
lie buried. But the insatiable thirst for knowledge must be grati- 
fied. Patience and skill rescue and preserve remnants and frag- 
ments of the truth. In chronicles and annals; in memoirs, biogra- 
phies, letters, documents, voyages, travels, jest-books, legends, fa- 
bles, philosophy, literature and science; in the treaties of allies, or 
the wai'-messages of angry nations; in the piteous wails of captive 
princes or humbler prisoners; in the exultant pssans of laureates, 
or threnodies over the bier of the dead; in satire and eulogy; in 
all that the cunning hand of the writer has set down or printed; 
are veiled truths waiting discovery by the wit of man. It is the 
object of the historian to sift these out; to accumulate, to classify, 
and to embody in comprehensive and vital form these facts and 
truths; and thus to set forth conscious, professed History. While 
the value of these professed histories varies with the subject and 
treatment; with the aims, ability, industry, and honesty of both 
author and reader; nevertheless it is in those books that treat pro- 



HISTORY. 9 

•essedly and distinctively of history that the broadest, clearest, 
and most direct road opens to its study. As a rule the general 
student must look for History in Histories. In Hume, Macaulay, 
and Mahon we must read the story of the English people; in Gib- 
bon's stately procession of the centuries, we must study the pass* 
age of Ancient into Modern civilization. But the histories that 
are the standards of information have been written with pui-poses 
30 distinct, with objects and aims so different, and under such 
diverse social, national, and philosophical influences, that to begin 
the intelligent exploration of one of these, we ought fully to per- 
ceive the author's stand-point. It is not hard to say that history, 
to be a complete record of humanity, should be a reflection of man's 
nature in its integrity, forgetting neither body, nor mind, nor soul; 
and that it should describe him both as an individual and as a 
member of society. But in point of fact authors have usually set 
before themselves the task either: 1st, of informing and pleasing 
by the simple narration of events; or 2nd, of adding to this the 
further moral purpose of instructing man as t(J his own soul; or 
3rd, of instructing society as to institutions, which are the soul of 
society. 

According to the development and tendencies of the epoch in 
which he has lived, and the temper and theory of the historian* 
the result of his labors is displayed in the form of Narrative, of 
Political History or of Sociology; or, as this three-fold division 
might otherwise be named: of Original History, Formal History, 
and the Philosophy of History. These divisions, according to the 
intention of the writer, correspond with the order of the develop- 
ment of historical writing. The earliest writers, or those who 
select the simpler forms, set down what they have seen, or heard, 
or read, or known. This plain narration includes many of the 
sources of history, and is indeed logically and chronologically the 
primary underlying stratum on which rests the entire mass of 
other history. It is in the first place biographical; and when 
biographies are woven into a text by the crossing threads of many 
lives, a series of historical pictures is produced in which sequence 
is the governing principle. Such is the importance of this bio- 
graphical element, that Carlyle, with his usual force, says: "His- 
tory is the essence of innumerable biographies." But the human 
mind in its effort towards generalization presently takes a step in 
advance; it describes the life of a nation, and gives the remark- 
able events in its career. This phase, in which History begins to 



10 HISTORY. 

reflect and compare, soon passes from mere Chronicle with its 
implicit teachings, to the consideration of principles and the di- 
dactic purpose of inculcating moral lessons. It is the confluence 
of Narrative and Moral Philosophy; and, as Prof. Seeley remarkSj 
it deals "with phenomena of a certain kind and these include po- 
litical institutions," The Historic faculty, developing, attempts 
to collate these phenomena, to discover the laws regulating themy 
and to deduce from them the principles applicable to the move- 
ment of political bodies. No longer satisfied with the simple sen- 
sations of mere sequence, it seeks for a constant exhibition of 
cause and efiect, though it does not yet look beyond immediate 
causes. One more stage and the critical spirit produces Scientific 
History. With more rigid methods of investigation, and severer 
standards of credibility than controlled the older writers, Niebuhr 
and his school have established this science, which is indeed the 
History of History, 

Finally the thinker, now striving to apprehend first causes and 
the obscurest mysteries of human existence, generalizes the facts^ 
institutions, and phenomena of the Past, to discover law in the suc- 
cession of historic events and in the movement of the human mind. 
Such is the origin of the Philosophy of History. We have aright 
to assume, hypothetically at least, from the analogies of the physi- 
cal cosmos, that order exists in the Moral as in the Material Uni- 
verse, that there is a Plan of Providence, — that a Divine law pre- 
vails in History as elsewhere. To discover the workings of this 
law in whole or in its parts, to trace the development of man and 
society, to disclose order, adaptation, and causation in the prog- 
ress of humanity under superintending Wisdom and Beneficence, 
is the noble and fascinating province of thePhilosophy of History,, 
But History has its spurious, as well as its true Philosophy; and 
the difference is immense. The former, framing a theory on the 
basis of a few bold generalizations, ignores the limits of the know- 
able, and confidently settles the de.^tiny of man and society. Tbe- 
latter, by methods strictly scientific and historical, proceeds cau- 
tiously to fix its data and thence to ascertain a few definite and 
unquestionable truths. It does. not evolve gorgeous pageants of 
the future from its inner consciousness, but admits its own falli- 
bility in the solution of problems involving both God and mau, 
As for instance, when it sees a nation abiding for a time and then 
perishing from the earth, with no larger legacy apparently to hu- 
manity than the dead infant leaves, or with the thread of its exist- 



HISTORY. 11 

ence broken by violence or severed by the sword, History does 
not pronounce its career fragmentary or its mission unfulfilled, for 
it recognizes that in the scope of Omniscience these may have been 
rounded to a perfect close. We must pursue the same methods 
with the Plistory of Humanity that we do with the biography of a 
society or of a man. Yet, on the other hand, in the accomplished 
destiny of the great historic Races, a true philosophy discerns 
parts of a purpose, and establishes propositions that serve as col- 
umns, as yet too slender and too few, on which will rise the splendid 
dome of the Science of Man. 

While I have thus described to you the successive"" objects and 
forms of historical effort, it has not been with the purpose of pre- 
ferring the one to the other in dignity or in intrinsic value. All 
are necessary to a complete conception of History. Narrative, 
with its concrete examples for the culture of the soul; Formal 
History, with its practical lessons of statesmanship ; and the 
Philosophy of History, with its abstract truths in social science, 
reflect with their revolving mirrors the many-sidedness of life; 
and, when combined as well as included in a scheme of historical 
study, present a full record of the Past of Humanity. 

III. But what is the place and importance of History in a scheme 
of liberal education? If History is such as I have described it, if 
its outlooks for the soul and active powers of man have not been 
unduly magnified, then its importance is co-extensive with human 
interests; and its place in a scheme of liberal education, — why 'it 
is a liberal education. But lest this claim shall be considered 
arrogant for what I have called the central study in the realm of 
knowledge, let me so far qualify it as to admit that no man can 
know anyone thing well who does not know many things well, and 
that the man of broadest culture should be the best in his own 
speciality; even as Barrow's Greek and Mathematics went to make 
him the pithiest preacher in the English tongue, and Bacon's 
Latin and Logic and Law helped to hammer him into the pro- 
foundest of philosophers. The study and teachings of History 
must be so co-ordinated with the other gymnastic and informing 
arts, sciences, and philosophies that fill out the time allotted to 
the student, as to occupy no disproportionate position. The best 
methods of instruction, the objects to be attained, and the text- 
books to be used, during each phase of progress in Historical 
education, with other important questions directly springing from 
or suggested by the theme propounded to mc, have been duly 



12 HISTORY. 

considered, and might be elaborated here to-day, were it not for a 
recent professional experience. At the end of one of my courses 
of lectures I unbosomed myself to my assembled class in the fol- 
lowing terms: "I have now, gentlemen, completed a course of 
twenty lectures on the preparation necessary to an orator. It any 
gentleman wishes the Art of Oratory finished in one hundred lec- 
tures more, he will please rise." Not one student had the strength 
of mind or body to rise to the occasion. I accept the moral, and 
will not test the politeness of my audience by asking, whether I 
shall take from my portfolio a hundred pages or so of manuscript 
on these topics. I will however claim your indulgence for a few 
remarks in regard to the teaching; of History. 

In that symmetrical adjustment of moral and intellectual forces 
necessary for self-culture, termed a liberal education, tlie chief 
offices of History are, 1st, to store the mind with information; 
and, 2nd, to stimulate and regulate the imagination; with a third 
incidental duty of disciplining the intellectual faculties. While 
History enriches and kindles the mind, it only indirectly trains it. 
It does not follow however that it should be postponed to gj'mnastic 
studies. As swimming is best learned in the water, so the pro- 
cesses of the understanding find matter and resistance in that 
moral element of which History supplies so large a part. Now 
then, while the indirect benefits of History need not be neglected 
in its instruction, still its principal functions must be kept clearly 
in view. And first the skillful teacher must awaken interest, must 
call into vigorous action the imagination, must arouse the mind of 
the pupil by the presentation of the Avonderful, For this purpose 
be must follow the analogy of historical production; and as the 
childhood of nations listens with large-eyed wonder to Myth only, 
so the craving of the individual child for the Fairy-tales of His- 
tory must not be denied. Here the Historic faculty has its birth. 
When it has come into being, it soon gains vigor for the strong 
meat of reason, criticism, and philosophy. What the Wonderful 
lacks in historic value is more than compensated by its literary 
worth. It penetrates every where, fructifies in poetry, and blooms 
in the illustrations of science. The great writers have interwoven 
familiar myths and legends, by citation, allusion, and metaphor, 
into the texture of their language and the very fabric of their 
thought. The Daphne, the Narcissus, and the Hyacinth blossom in 
our gardens; the great gods of Olympus still rule the planets; and 
the lesser deities give name to asteroids, distant stars, and glitter- 



HISTORY. 13 

ing constellations. We can notCcall it History, yet it is still Liter- 
ature; it is still the haunted grove through whose dim aisles leads 
the approach to the stately Temple of History. 

Story books of History and lives of great men are a fitter and 
more philosophical introduction to the study of History than those 
elementary manuals that combine barren lists of condensed facts 
and naked dates with a shadowy sketch of men and events. Abridg- 
ments and summaries are but dry chips of knowledge to the eager 
appetite of youth. Outlines try to give everything, and give noth- 
ing complete. While some manuals may not be open to these 
censures, the teacher for the most part will have to remedy their 
most obvious defects: as a live man he must supply the lacking 
vitality, and as a true man, point out the errors of his text-book. 

The teacher will observe his pupil gradually demanding more 
rigid tests of verity, and fuller proof of what are called the facts 
of History. He is now ready for the acquirement of Formal His- 
tory; and soon becomes so for that of Scientific History. But 
there is no period of lite or scholarly attainment when he can afford 
to neglect the vivid and stirring side of the Past, where men and 
women move and talk and act as they do upon the theatre of actual 
life. 

In this more advanced stage of Historical Study it is necessary 
to adjust fully in the mind of the learner the relations of time and 
space. Chronology serves as a skeleton for the living tissues of 
History, without which it is shapeless or distorted. But History 
is human action in space as well as in time. The characters, and 
hence the deeds, of men and races, are modified by external condi- 
tions. Climate, soil, production, geographical location and con- 
figuration, and other like circumstances, influence the habits and 
career of a people. Governmental policy, even the national life, 
is often moulded by the nature and extent of territorial posses- 
sion. Thus there is significance in John Mitchell's sneer at Eng- 
land: " that it is no longer a European power; but a universal, in- 
tertropical, circumpolar, double-hemispherical Powei-." By means 
then of Chronology and Geography, by co-ordination in time and 
space. History acquires the definiteness of contemporary transac- 
tions and is realized to the mind's eye. 

Critical History must be read; but not always, nor necessarily, 
critically. Quantity, range, and variety are needed, and should 
be allowed; but the student often requires the curb, as well as the 
spur. If encouraged, or permitted, he will read widely and ex- 



14 HISTORY. 

haustively. His wanderings may be devious, far from that hard, , 
straight, Appian way prescribed by authority; but his light foot- 
step will sometimes lead him to recesses where the grand Histo- 
rian's stately chariot has never rolled. 

So vast is the area to be surveyed, and so little does the student 
accomplish who masters all that the universities require, that the 
thought arises whether this study might not be deferred till after- 
life. The answer is, that so great a mass of information demands 
distribution over an entire life-time; and that early youth and 
mature manhood, as well as a fair proportion of the college course, 
must share in its acquisition. In college, too, the literary tastes 
are formed; and that Historic sense must be cultivated without 
which information is of small avail. 

As all History cannot be learned, the question comes up, to 
what segment of it we ought to devote our attention. Without 
attempting a direct reply, it may be well to remember that An- 
cient History has its chief value in the simplicity of its problems, 
and the certainty of its conclusions. The unmixed questions of 
Humanity are put and answered. The mind, duly trained through 
such processes to a larger generalization, is at last able to grapple 
with the complexity of Modern History, to eliminate truth from its 
multitudinous factors, and to pursue tlie tangled skein of meta- 
physical or political analysis to remote, but attainable, conclusions. 
Contemporary History, on the other hand, has tlie advantage of 
directness of teaching. Its accents are clearly audible, because 
they fall from living lips. Its complexity compels a more stringent 
mental discipline than the simpler forms of antiquity. Its sugges- 
tiveness and immediate applicability excite the spirit of inquiry. 
Prof. Seeley says, " the text should be put before the commentary, 
the present before the past." I waive on this occasion this vexed 
question, satisfied with stating the importance of each of the two 
branches of history. 

Our own history is, of course, the most important to us, and if 
the education is so partial and fragmentary that only a little his- 
tory can be learned, that little should be one's own. But this view 
is not consistent with the conception of a liberal education, and 
may be omitted. In a complete and rounded scheme, our own 
history having a practical value as that to which all our knowl- 
edge of historical science may be applied, even if it has been 
studied first, should also be studied last. When we come to study 
it, this difficulty will impede us: that no full or fair history of our 



HISTORY. 15 

eouutry has yet been written. To know it aright we must go to 
original sources; biography, documents, letters, travels; even to 
tradition, less uncertain than the printed page of partisan hate; 
but especially must we go the Constitution and the contemporary 
expositions of its framers. We must witness with the second 
sight of the soul — the divine power of imagination — the genesis 
of institutions, that by the growth of centuries have become heart 
of oak, that have been hardened in fire and blood by our English 
ancestry, and that have been tiansmitted to us as an inalienable 
legacy. And lastly, we must breathe with a full inspiration that 
liberal air of British freedom that vitalized the life-blood of our 
institutions. 

You, teachers! does it not stir your blood, in the dull routine of 
daily duty, to know that, as torch-bearers of liberty, you may hand 
down from sire to sou the quenchless flame, the memory of an im- 
mortal past; and to feel that no epoch of that past blazes with a 
fuller splendor than this, whose history you have not read but 
-lave heljDed to make! 

As you tell the story of our contemporary history to the offspring 
of heroes, you can draw from your knowledge of the past a multi- 
tude of precedents, teaching patience, fortitude, moderation, mag- 
nanimity. You can point to the moral bankruptcies of the worldly- 
wise — the failure of bigotry and persecution as moral agencies — 
the certainty of national retribution for national crimes — and a 
thousand other lessons of priceless value, to fortify the heart for 
the practice of virtue. In every catastrophe you can enable a 
generous youth to read that disaster warrants not despair, and 
that an overruling Providence wrests the purposes of evil to good 
results. Thus can their awakened vision be led to behold in His- 
tory the consummation of the Divine Will, setting at naught the 
puppets of the Play, and unfolding the secret Plot of Providence, 
when Victory shall mourn her poisoned laurels, and Defeat ob- 
literate with tears the record of her errors. 



